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Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster portray themselves as humble, anti-corporate geeks, but eBay prefers to think of them as extortionists.

Updated at 2:12 PM PDT on Thursday, Dec 10, 2009

Craigslist likes to paint itself as a mild-manner company of über-geeks just out to help people make personal connections -- with cofounder Craig Newmarktelling Wiredthis year that he'd initially planned to make the company a non-profit, if only there weren't so many pesky rules and forms.

In the continuing trial over dueling lawsuits between Craigslist and minority shareholder eBay, eBay's Garrett Price painted an entirely different picture of Newmark in his testimony yesterday.

It's the first public confirmation of the $16 million payoff, which was first reported by Silicon Valley gossip blog Valleywag in 2007. Craigslist has yet to comment on that aspect of the eBay deal.

Price, who argued the demand amounted to "essentially extortion," testified that Newmark and Buckmaster didn't want their personal take from the deal revealed lest it damage the company's do-gooder image.

"We used it to benefit our business to the extent it was in compliance" with the terms of the investment deal Levey testified. He collected three years of information and provided it to the team building Kijiji.